Tag Archives: robert-e-lee
What if Robert E. Lee had Sent Troops to Vicksburg?
This article comes from the Fall 2021 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “That question was certainly on the mind of Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon that season. By default, then, it was also on Lee’s. Anchored on bluffs lining the Mississippi River, Vicksburg was the key to success in the West for either […]
Stay and Fight It Out
This book by Kristopher White and Chris Mackowski comes to us from the Emerging Civil War Series published by Savas-Beatie. It covers the fighting on Culp’s Hill on July 2, 1863, the second day of the battle of Gettysburg. I have to say I have a few minor problems with the first parts of the […]
The War for the Union: The Organized War to Victory 1864-1865
This is the last volume in Professor Allan Nevins’s magnum opus, The Ordeal of the Union. This takes us from the beginning of 1864, including US Grant taking command of all United States armies, through to the end of the war. Initially, Grant wanted to stay in the West, and he wanted to make his […]
The War for the Union: The Organized War 1863-1864
This book by Allan Nevins is the penultimate volume in his series, The Ordeal of the Union. “From the outset,” Professor Nevins writes, “the antagonists had been aware of a fundamental difference in position. The North had to fight for a decisive victory in the field; for the destruction or hopeless crippling of the Confederate […]
How the Word Is Passed
This book by journalist Clint Smith is part travel memoir and part synthesis of current historical scholarship on slavery and memory. He writes of his home town of New Orleans, “The echo of enslavement is everywhere. It is in the levees, originally built by enslaved labor. It is in the detailed architecture of some of […]
The War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution 1862-1863
This is the sixth book in Allan Nevins’s magnum opus, The Ordeal of the Union. This book, Nevins tells us, ”takes up the narrative a four leaders step forward in powerful roles: Lincoln disclosing his plan for slavery, Stanton taking over the War Office, Grant delivering the first heavy blow in the West, and McClellan preparing […]
A Union Rebel Inside Robert E. Lee’s Family
This article is from the Spring 2024 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “‘[Robert E. Lee Jr.] is off with Jackson & I hope will catch Pope & his cousin Louis Marshall,’ General Robert E. Lee wrote to his daughter Mildred on July 28, 1862, not long after Maj. Gen. John Pope had been given […]
Robert E. Lee Endured a Precipitous Reset in Maryland
This article comes from the Winter 2024 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. “Debate about the importance of the loss of Robert E. Lee’s Special Orders No. 191 to the outcome of the September 1862 Maryland Campaign has long revolved around the response of Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan upon reading the document found […]
Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865
This excellent book by Dr. Ethan Rafuse of the US Army Command and General Staff College looks at Robert E. Lee’s generalship, accurately in my view, and also looks at how it is that such an excellent general was defeated. It’s become in vogue for many young social historians to pronounce Lee to be “not […]
1865 Battle of High Bridge
Normally a presentation like this wouldn’t make it to this blog, but I decided to feature it as an example of what not to do. Jerry Desmond, the former executive director of Pamplin Park, begins by telling us other people are far more qualified to give this talk. Then why are we listening to you? […]
Student of the American Civil War 
Recent Comments